The worldwide demand for communication capability continues to increase due the advancement of areas undeveloped previously and the growth and expansion of businesses in already established areas. Moreover, homes or offices previously equipped with a single telephone line are now more likely to install two or even three lines to facilitate simultaneous communication by individuals or devices within the home or office.
At the same time, competition between long distance carriers has increased thereby reducing profitability in providing traditional long distance telephone service. There are also few market entrants due to this reduced rate of return in exchange for the large capital investment required to build out complex worldwide telephone transmission facilities. This further limits competition.
As is commonly understood, a caller intending to place a call, such as for example, a call from the West coast to the East coast utilizes traditional POTS to facilitate the call. As shown in FIG. 1, a caller utilizes a telephone 120 to gain dial-tone from a central office 122. One or more central offices serve a plurality of customers within a local access transport area (LATA) 140. The central office 122 provides dial tone to the caller. Upon receiving a request for a call, the central office decodes the dialed numbers. In this example the central office 122 detects a long distance call to a distant location and accordingly forwards the call to a toll office 126 to complete the call. The central office and toll office determine the long distance service provider associated with the caller and initiate proper billing and responsibility for the call. The toll office utilizes SS7 signaling on lines 130 to setup the communication channel to one or more other toll offices 132. As is known by those of ordinary skill in the art, SS7 or other similar signaling utilizes common channel signaling (CCS) to first obtain and dedicate voice trunks 130 to the dialed number via a second toll office 132, a second central office 142 to a remote telephone 144. After SS7 establishes a completed path of voice trunks to the dialed number, it activates the voice trunks, initiates the ring process of the dialed number and drops off the call to assist establishment of another call. It should be noted that after the SS7 dedicates the voice trunks and activates the voice channel, its interaction with the call is over and the call proceeds as a standard direct connection between two remote terminals. In this manner, the exchange of conversation or data may occur.
In many calls determined to be long distance, which is to say calls out of a LATA area 140, the call crosses one or more LATA lines 124. A LATA (Local Access and Transport Area) line 124 comprises a dividing line between one of the 196 arbitrarily designated zones in which a local telephone company, such as a Local Exchange Carrier, may originate and complete telephone calls. Calls that cross a LATA line have historically been required to be handled by a long distance telephone company, such as AT&T, MCI, or Sprint.
While such systems served their purpose well, the increased demand for telecommunication services has placed greater demands on the existing system. One drawback of the present telecommunication system operating under the SS7 standard is the poor utilization of available bandwidth on an active voice trunk. Once the prior art system establishes a voice channel, that particular voice channel is dedicated to a single particular conversation. Such a method of operation poorly utilizes voice channels, voice being a data stream in which long periods of silence occur and only requires limited bandwidth and which is greatly compressible.
Another drawback of prior art systems is the high cost of adding additional resources. To add additional voice channels additional cables must be installed and expensive equipment utilized to facilitate communication over each of the one or more newly installed cables. These costs can be substantial.
A further disadvantage to such prior art systems is their congregation in the control of a few large and powerful corporations. These corporations control the market on calls which must cross LATA lines because they have the facilities to complete these calls. For example, a telephone line subscriber may designate one of numerous small to mid-sized long distance carriers as the long distance service provider for a telephone line. The subscriber may select a particular carrier for any reason such as price, advertising, or other incentive. However, these long distance carriers are often organizations without actual long distance capability and hence must purchase long distance access in bulk from one of the large long distance service providers to complete calls that cross a LATA boundary. Because the large long distance service providers control the market, the small to mid-sized carrier may be forced to pay higher rates than the large long distance service providers. This is yet another factor that limits competition.
Yet another drawback to the prior art system of providing long distance communication service is one or more governmental fees that may be imposed as a result of governmental regulation.
While existing prior art systems could be expanded, such expanded systems would undesirably suffer from the drawbacks described above.
In response to these and other drawbacks, other methods and apparatuses have been proposed to facilitate local and inter-LATA communications. One such proposal is to transmit voice information in data packets, utilized by a packet-switched network, such as the Internet. As also shown in FIG. 1, the central office 122 may connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which in turn connects to a worldwide configuration of computers 150. One example of such a worldwide configuration of computers is the Internet 150. In such a system a user at a first computer terminal 156 would dial-up an ISP 152 via a central office 122 in a manner known in the art. The first computer terminal 156 includes software and a voice input device to transform speech data to data in the form of data packets as is commonly utilized in an IP packet-switched network. The first computer terminal 156 transmits these packets to the ISP 152 wherein the packets are further transmitted via the Internet 150 to a second ISP 154 and then on to a computer terminal 158. Software and hardware on the second computer terminal 158 decode the incoming packets and regenerate a speech signal intended to resemble the original signal from a user at the first computer terminal 156. Conversation or other types of real time data exchange between parties is proposed to occur in this manner. This type of system is often referred to as voice-over-IP communication. Indeed, an entire standard has been dedicated to voice-over-IP, commonly referred to as H.323.
The voice-over-IP method of the prior art and the H.323 standard also suffer from numerous disadvantages. Most notably, prior art voice-over-IP systems provide unacceptable quality of communications because of data loss in packets progressing via the Internet and because of delays associated with transmission via the Internet.
Moreover, voice-over-IP requires special equipment by at least one of the participants in the exchange and subscription to an ISP. As a result, prior art voice-over-IP is prohibitively expensive, inconvenient, and is not available in most locations due to the requirement for specialized equipment.
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages associated with the prior art and provides a new method and apparatus to achieve communications.